Folk Art at Ancestral Temple in Foshan

The Ancestral Temple is a museum of folk art, in which the architectural and decorative craftsmanship is so skillful that it is regarded as the Palace of Oriental Art by foreign friends. This is due to the well-developed folk crafts in Chancheng. Chancheng is one of the important origin of Guangdong wood carving, mainly mahogany carving, but also affixed with gold foil and become a gold lacquer wood carving, Chancheng wood carving is known for its sharp knife, simple lines, bold, bold, smooth, generous and full of composition, decorative and strong, the subject matter to the characters, animals, flowers, fruits and other as much as the architectural decoration of the wood is now the main. Ancestral temple in front of the temple, the main hall of the display of large-scale shrine, is one of the famous Chancheng gold lacquer wood carving masterpieces. The content of the carving includes "Jingke stabbing the Qin King", "Li Yuanba ambrosial colt", "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" and "Xue Gang against the Tang Dynasty" and other stories. The story of "Xue Gang against the Tang Dynasty" and so on. In addition, the ancestral temple building wood carvings are also a lot of, among them there are gable wood carving obeisance, flower baskets, wood carving gate, stage (Wanfu stage), screens, plaques, couplets, hanging screen, ceremonial, colorful door, incense, windows and doors, table, tables and chairs, and so on.

The most praiseworthy thing is that the architectural decoration of the ancestral temple adopts a large number of ceramic sculptures, wood carvings and brick carvings, gray sculptures and so on. One of the application of ceramic tile ridge in the building **** there are six, respectively, the device in the three doors, the front hall, the main hall, the front hall two corridors and the Qingzhen building and other buildings on the roof ridge. The largest three door tile ridge. Full length 32.02 meters. Positive both sides are to opera stories as the main theme of the sculpture, sculpture of the face of the characters, hands are exposed tire, not glazed, in order to vividly and evocatively show the character's facial expression and hand modeling. Glaze color to green, blue, yellow, white-based, noble and gorgeous color, simple and elegant. Set up in the ancestral temple of ceramic tile plastic everywhere after a hundred years of wind and rain, the glaze is still bright as new, visible in its excellent manufacturing process. Gray plastic, also known as gray batch, is one of the folk arts with a long history in Chancheng, with gray plastic embellishment and decoration of buildings, mainly used in the door and window frames, the top of the wall, the eaves of the ridge, pavilions and other places. The themes include figures, animals, landscapes, birds and flowers, as well as paintings and calligraphy. In the Ancestral Temple, this kind of Chancheng traditional folk gray sculpture works of art abound. For example, the gray sculptures of the doors and foreheads on both sides of the ancestral temple: "Tang Minghuang's visit to the Moon Palace", "The Peach Garden", "Guo Ziyi's view of longevity" in the east corridor, "Na Tcha's haunting the sea" in the west corridor and so on. The East Corridor, "Guo Ziyi's Birthday", the West Corridor, "Na Tcha", and so on. In addition, there are: "Eight Immortals", "Three Heroes Battle Lu Bu", "Liu Ling Drunk", as well as the zither, chess, poetry and paintings and other themes of the works. This grey sculpture is vivid, lifelike and colorful. Brick carving and stone carving is also one of the folk handicrafts in Chancheng. It is mainly used for architectural decoration. Is our country has a long history of architectural art, the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the Pearl River Delta around, with these folk sculpture art is very popular to decorate buildings. Ancestral Temple Park in the Ma County ancestral hall inside the plaque, are decorated with brick carving, stone carving, which was built in Ming Zhengde sixteen years (1521), is the Chancheng City is currently the most complete preservation of one of the earliest brick carving decorative arts. Ancestral Temple Hall on both sides in front of the three doors, Duansu door on the brick carving "big red robe" (Hai Rui story), Chongjing door on the "guard Fangzhou" (Niu Gao story). The main features of these brick carvings are: fine carving, more layers, composition, focus on generalization, the main body of a strong sense of mastery of the carving process, more round carving, carving, relief carving, the knife is strong and sharp extremely rich in decorative. Careful visitors in viewing the ancestral temple brick carving can be found in the brick and brick joints and not the slightest trace of its production process is amazing.

Lacquer puff also known as lacquer clamping Zhu plastic is a kind of clamping seam with lacquer sticking puff into the sculpture process, commonly known as the lacquer puff. The earliest appeared in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, to the Tang Dynasty for the feast. Chancheng Ancestral Temple Museum in the statue of the Great God are made with this process of pouncing and become. Chancheng folk lacquer sculpture, has a long history. The production process must be molded out of the clay tire portraits or animals, vessels, and then turn the plaster mold, plaster mold with small pieces of linen paste layer by layer, molding, and then in the tire shaped surface with fine sculpture, carving lines, decorative varnish (oil), gold, color, and so on, and finally shaped a complete three-dimensional statue or artifacts. In the Ancestral Temple there are now more than 20 lacquer puff statues for people to visit, which is the Qing Dynasty Chancheng lacquer puff works of art.

The main hall of the ancestral temple temple is also furnished with many precious artifacts, such as 70 pieces of 33 kinds of weapons copper wall and iron wall honor guard, 1.31 meters in diameter of the giant bronze mirror, a large bronze tripod bronze bells and incense burners. Ironware has a large iron tripod, iron tripod, iron painting and so on. The garden is also displayed with stone plaques, Ming and Qing dynasty stone beasts, monumental carvings of the Tang dynasty "ZhenGuan two years" paragraph chess words YangWen "Chancheng", stone tablets next to the replica. Re-assembled to complete the ceramic tile ridge, a large number of gold and wood carvings building components, large iron casting warrior statues, iron casting beasts, iron cannons and so on. These exhibits focus on reflecting the Ming and Qing Dynasties Foshan's superior craftsmanship. No wonder, some foreign friends to visit the ancestral temple will be known as the "Palace of Oriental Folk Art".